


The One That Got Away

by CyanAndCharcoal



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-22 23:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20000176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanAndCharcoal/pseuds/CyanAndCharcoal
Summary: After the loss of someone far more than a dear friend, Regina Mills visits his grave to say some things she never could.





	The One That Got Away

**Author's Note:**

> Sad GoldenQueen vibes. I cry over them practically every day.

She cut the roses herself, removing each thorn carefully until they were nothing more than the elegant flowers people perceived them to be. She didn’t know why, when the very sight of them caused her an inexplicable pain. 

It was when she entered Storybrooke’s cemetery and began to make her way along the familiar path to her oldest friend’s grave that she was able to admit to herself why that was. Red roses. For so long they had been a symbol of Rumple and Belle’s love. As that thought crossed her mind there was a pang in her chest as if a fist had clenched around her heart. It was yet another sign that there were things, things she had never said before, that needed to be said now.

Regina knelt down to place the roses in front of the grave. She looked at the name on it, Rumplestiltskin, a name that had been written on this stone for far less time than it had been on her heart. It was time to tell him - and herself - all of it.

“Hello, old friend.” Regina drew herself back to her full height and prepared herself for some long overdue honesty. People had talked about burying him in a more honoured location, but she had insisted he be laid to rest here, alongside Baelfire, his first son. It was undoubtedly what he would have wanted.  
“It’s been almost a week since I was crowned Queen of the United Realms. I don’t know how things work wherever you are, if you can see things down here, but it was an amazing ceremony. Everyone was there.” She sighed, knowing the weight her next admission would carry. “Except you. More than anyone it was you I wished could have been there, to see the woman you’ve seen succumb to darkness time and time again finally becoming what she should have been years ago, if not for all the obstacles in her way. You know - just like you described that time in my car.” 

Regina swallowed - her mouth felt incredibly dry. She couldn’t shake the feeling that any second now she would turn around and find him standing right behind her, and these words she was only prepared to say when she knew there wouldn’t be a response would suddenly be in need of an answer. “I miss you, Rumple. You meant so much more to me than I would ever have dared admit to you. We’ve both done terrible things to each other - tried to kill each other, condemn each other to fates worse than death - and yet there was always respect and understanding in it. There are so many types of suffering we both understood more than anything. Trying to be good for a child who wouldn’t accept our magic, anger at a parent for the way they mistreated us. Behind everything evil we ever did, we always knew no matter how much we pushed ourselves to despise each other, we would always survive it. Because we respected what we’d been through, and knew that in a way, we needed each other. For every cruel word or action we threw at the other, there was an equal amount of self loathing behind it. And so we could never work against each other for too long. We always found one another.” That brought a humourless smile to her lips, knowing all too well of the way Snow and David frequently used finding one another as an example of why they had true love. 

“I think we always loved one another in a way. We neglected it and let it wither, calling it merely the love of two friends who had shared so much pain and joy. Besides, I don’t think this world would have allowed us to make it work. We both had our fated true love - you with Belle and me with Robin. But after it was over, Robin and I - it felt like a pretty dream. True love was something I could never really have. When I was imprisoned in the wish realm, I saw him again in a vision, and all I could bring myself to say was that our story was too short, that I missed him and tell myself to enjoy his presence while it lasted. Of course I hope to be reunited with him one day just as I know you’ve been reunited with Belle, and yet I’ve been able to move past his death. Which brings me to...why I haven’t been able to do the same with you.”

“When you made your final sacrifice, I told myself the tears I cried were of both sadness and joy. Sadness for the loss of someone I loved so dearly, and joy that you would finally find a place where you’d get the happiness you worked so hard to find. But I fear that was a lie.” She bit her lip, drawing blood. “You deserve your happiness more than anything, but something I’ve realised lately is that a part of me always wanted you to find that happiness with me. The bond between us has always been more than that of a friendship. Neither of us would have achieved what we wanted to without each other, and now you’re gone - I still can’t believe I must learn to live without you. Without the one I could never bring myself to tell how I felt.”  
Her vision was starting to go cloudy and she knew her eyes were tearing up. “But I’m not foolish. It could never have worked, not in this world or any other. All we ever did was strive to make those we saw as our destined partners believe in us and see us as redeemed, and there was no room for any love - if it were even requited - between a student of dark magic and her former mentor.”  
Regina knelt down to kiss the rose petals, and when she withdrew her lips she could see her own blood from the cut on her mouth being absorbed by the flower, sinking into its luscious scarlet folds as if it never existed. She stood up again, only for a tear to slip from her eye onto her cheek, and from there plummet to the petals as well.  
“In another lifetime, dearest friend. There could never have been a place for...whatever we shared..in this one.”

Regina thought back to when she had used Jekyll’s serum to create the Evil Queen, a vessel for her darkest desires that she never wished revealed. That version of herself had let Rumplestiltskin use her, had been blind to his manipulation because she wanted to believe in the possibility of a new beginning with him. And yet, even she had known subconsciously - it would never be love. When Regina realised there was an intimate side to their relationship, it had been a painful reminder of their old lessons. She would have been more than willing to give herself to him, despite knowing she would have been being used - at least partially. Still she wished she could have been in her evil half’s place, so she had some element of his passion, feigned or not, to hold onto. Because now he was gone, and he wasn’t coming back like last time. She would never be able to ask a question that still ate away at her: would it have been different with me? If it had simply been Regina, the one who had overcome that darkness and learned to forgive, would any romance between them merely have been a furthered embodiment of their usual feuds, a way of expressing their mutual hatred and self loathing in yet another twisted power play? Hate was so much easier than love, especially when one had been as unlucky in love as they had. But even Regina had once admitted that there was a thin line between love and hate.

No. These thoughts wouldn’t do. Rumple is happy, happy with Belle just like he always should have been. Regina forced herself to stare at the red roses so hard they left an afterimage on her irises. You see? He loved Belle. He always did. Just like you loved Robin. It was fate, and it brought you both happiness.  
And yet the one thing she and her former mentor had always been good at was defying expectations and proving that people’s misconceptions about them could be altered, their destinies written by none other than themselves. 

Running a hand through her hair, Regina pushed herself to be practical. There was no use to this. The Good Queen could not spend her days mourning another ghost of the light she’d lost in her life. She would come back here every day, force herself to look at his gravestone, until she understood the futility of these feelings. If she were to spend her days regretting what could have been - no, what she merely imagined would have been - would not benefit anyone, least of all herself. Rumplestiltkskin died a hero, and she would honour his sacrifice. She would do everything in her power to ensure no one would be in her current position again, ruling the realms as she ought to have done in the Enchanted Forest. 

She turned and walked away, wiping away the tears of what she knew to be the loss of her final, eternal love.


End file.
